of influence in terms of those races. before hand,speakerboehnerhada hard time getting some of his more conservative members to buy in to certain concrete hiatt -- compromises. going forward, we will have to see if the tea party conservatives will seem to have the same support. the president now has the upper hand and when he talks to speaker boehner he will have to take that message back and he gets a little bit more behind him. >> week and a shop with a meeting between the leaders and the white house. what is the dynamic? >> it will be very interesting to see. hopefully we will hear from them exactly what their conversation was with the president. it is unlikely that we're going to see a detailed agreement on specific issues. are we going to hear about tax breaks or how entitlement reform is going to happen in the deal? on not sure. these figures are going to be out there. they're all going to be scrambling to set the tone in the way that they want to set it. of they will have discussions like the democratic leaders also say let these are the areas where we made clear to republican le

this to be a juicy story as opposed to writing about white house budget negotiations withjohnboehner, particularlyin the last 12 hours as we have learned about an fbi agent who was investigating the case initially who sent a shirtless photo of himself to one of the women involved and now these 30,000 e-mails, suspect e-mails between the general who had been commanding the war effort in afghanistan, general allen, and jill kelley, one of the women involved in this, which make me ask the question, when does he have time to run the war? >> right, right. i want to ask you, too, watching pictures of the white house in the briefing room and jay carney's going to step up to the podium, get a lot of questions, you can bet a lot on the scandal and the implications and this certainly has to be quite a distraction, to say the very least, the white house. how do they get on top of this? how do they get ahead of the story in some way? clearly they're not going to want the president to deal with these questions tomorrow at the press conference. >> well, it's inevitable, you can put money on it president obama

speakerboehnersaidand said, look, let's work on closing these loopholes and deductions. that is common ground. there's no reason why -- >> that would raise taxes on people. this is where you get this fight in the republican party. because if your taxes go up but your tax rate doesn't go up, is that a sell republicans can live with? >> it depends how it's mixed up. we don't want to raise the tax rate. if you're closing loopholes and broadening the base, lowering the rate, then i think we could get there. >> you signed groemp norquist's pledge i'm going to assume because pretty much every congressman did. >> yes. >> would you be fine doing a compromise where you would go against your signature on that pledge. if you felt there was a compromise on the table -- >> i do not -- i do not -- >> to the pledge -- dramatic, wasn't it? >> it was dramatic. >> but i need these notes so i'm going to put them back like that. >> i do not intend to do that. i want to fight for the principles i believe in. i, too, was elected, and i think that's part of the give and take. >> grover norquist was not elect

leaders including house speakerjohnboehner, housedemocratic leader nancy pelosi, senate majority leader harry reid and a republican mitch mcconnell. the first meeting since the election. they discussed what to do about expiring busheir tax reductions and across-the-board spending cuts set to hit in january called the fiscal cliff. they allowed cameras in the room before the talks. >> i want to welcome the congressional leadership and thank them for their time. we have -- factors don't go on middle class families that our economy remains strong and we are creating jobs and and that's the agenda that democrats and republicans and independents all across the country share so our challenge is to make sure that we are able to capri together and work to find common ground, make compromises and build consensus. all of us agree on this they want to see us focused on that but not our politics here in washington. my hope is this is the beginning of a process where we are able to come to an agreement that will reduce our deficit in a balanced way that we will deal with some of these long term enti